Seven Levels
Despite the efforts of her mother, Beatrice, better known to her friends as Bea, wasn't Christian.
True, she'd gone to church every Sunday until the age of 12, and partaken in Sunday School until that same age. That had been the agreement, and while her mother had said that she'd pray for her, she'd agreed to let her daughter use Sundays to do her own thing. Sometimes see a movie, sometimes ride her bike, more often than not these days, study. Because high school, just like her mother was on a bad day, was a bitch.
"Max."
Come this Sunday, she was in the public library. A run-down building that had steadily received less and less funds over the years, but still had more resources than its school counterpart, not to mention the benefit of being open on the weekends. This library was "come one, come all, please leave a donation because the budget is getting smaller every year."
"Max," she repeated.
Being come one, come all, that meant that people of…certain lesser mental persuasions were allowed to come in, whether they were actually here to study or not. Not that the library was bereft of novels, or more importantly, comics (well, more important to some people), but-
"Max!"
"What?" Exclaimed the boy opposite her.
"Would you shut down your Game Gear?"
"Game Gear? This is a Gameboy."
"My mistake," she murmured, as she returned to her essay. "Just turn down the volume. Every time you collect a ring, it's like a knife through my spine."
"Ring?"
"Coins, tokens, whatever. Just do your Jumpman thing in peace."
"Oh Bea, Bea, Bea," Max sighed. "You know nothing about videogames."
"No, I don't." And I'd like to keep it that way.
"Now you see, this game is called Super Mario Land," Max said, as he held up the Gameboy as if it were the Holy Grail (having seen the Holy Grail on one of their adventures, Bea knew that it was anything but a piece of green plastic). "Released in 1989, it isn't up to the level of Super Mario Brothers, let alone Super Mario World, but all the same, it's a solid platformer."
"Duly noted."
"Now in Mario, you collect coins," Max said. "It's in Sonic the Hedgehog you collect rings."
"Fascinating."
"Now this may seem like heresy to some people, but I think Sonic's the better platformer. Yeah, the Super Nintendo has a better library over all, but Sega still does what Nintendon't and-"
"Max, I'm sure this is all very important information that has dire implications for the future of humankind, but would you please just stop talking?"
She actually looked up from her notepad to meet her friend's eyes. In doing so, she bit her lip, because in them there was a flicker of…not exactly hurt, but something else. Something she couldn't quite put her finger on.
"Sure Bea. I'll be quiet."
Regardless, he turned down the volume and went to murdering the minions of Bowser, or whoever was the bad guy of his stupid game. At the age of 14, Bea would have thought that Max would have passed on from this nonsense, but instead, he was fixated on whether the Genesis or SNES was the better console. Maybe Ernie was rubbing off on him, but still…
Maybe we're just different people.
She took that as the case, as she returned to her English essay – an analysis of The Divine Comedy, where like Max's game, some hero had to save some damsel from some monster. An analysis that would give her a D- at best, but one, she supposed, had at least some basis in reality.
"You into your Hell stuff?" Max asked eventually.
Bea remained silent.
"I thought you hated that stuff, yet now you're reading The D-Nine Calamity?"
"First, it's called The Divine Comedy," said Bea, as she held up the cover for him to see. "Second, it's got nothing to do with my mum, or any of that stuff. Third, I thought you said you'd be quiet."
Like a drooling puppy, Max couldn't be kept down. Instead, as he looked at the cover, he said something.
"What?"
"Said it looks like Skullmaster's domain."
Bea sighed. "Sure, Max. You go with that. I'll be sure to write in my essay that the seven realms of Hell are like the domain of a giant albino with delusions of grandeur."
"Come on, rivers of lava, beasties beneath the Earth."
"You're imagining things."
"Come on," he said with a smirk. "Gotta admit, it takes you back."
"Yes, it does," Bea said with a shiver. "And that's why I don't want to think about it."
There was a chill in the air that she couldn't put her finger on. She looked at Max and again, saw the same look she'd seen earlier. Not hurt, but rather, as she now recognized it to be, regret. Remorse. Nostalgia, even. Skullmaster was defeated, the world was saved, and while every so often Max had to pop through a portal to perform the role of the Mighty One, such instances were few now, and getting fewer. With Skullmaster defeated, it was as if the universe itself had shifted, with the danger level going from "world-shattering event every week" to "I'm bored, mum!"
Or, alternatively, Virgil and Norman were handling things themselves. With Virgil's brains and Norman's very, very big sword, she wouldn't put it past them. They'd done fine until Max had discovered the Cosmic Cap, after all.
"You really don't miss it?" Max asked eventually.
She looked up at him. "Do you?"
"I…well, yeah, I do. Kind of. Mainly."
"Odd. Because you didn't seem to."
"Oh, that was the second time round. The first time was…" Max stopped talking.
"Max?"
"Doesn't matter."
"Max, what did you mean the-"
"Drop it Bea," he snapped.
She glared at him. "Excuse me, Mister Hero, but you were the one who brought up the-"
"Bea, I said shut it."
People were starting to stare at them now. People looking up from books, from magazines, even the library's computers (modems were pretty hot right now).
"Sure, sure," Bea murmured. "Dropping it…"
She didn't want to, strange as that was. She'd come here to do her English assignment, Max had come for…actually, she wasn't sure why he was here. Like a dog, he tended to follow her, Felix, both of them, then jump at the chance to leave them in the dust when a certain talking chicken (or fowl, whatever) called for him. Sometimes, they'd come with him, but the funny thing about getting older was that adventures through portals left you with less time for homework, and you had a greater sense of your own mortality.
Yet, Bea thought, as she watched Max return to his videogame, those times had been…weird. Not weird in the sense of aliens, and monsters, and everything else (which were plenty weird, of course), but she'd never been able to shake the feeling that Max knew more than he let on. He always seemed to know what to do, how to do it, and most noticeably, when to do it. As if he knew Skullmaster's plans before they happened. So when the monster had been sealed away from now until the end of eternity, he hadn't broken a sweat.
Well, technically he had been sweating, that deep beneath the earth, but even so…
So she kept skimming through The Divine Comedy – from one circle to the next, to one page in her notebook to the next, as Dante continued to descend to rescue his beloved. It was romantic, in a way, even if she didn't see it as a romantic text and-
"Yes!"
"What?"
Max showed her the Gameboy. "Beat it!"
"That's great, Max, that's really great."
"Come on Bea, I remember when we used to have fun."
"Fun?" She snapped. "Oh, sure. Fun. Chased by lava monsters, nearly fed to giant snakes, alien invasions that looked like something out of, um, Alien…"
"Aliens."
"What?"
"Aliens. Totally the better film, in case you're wondering and-"
Bea hit him over the head with her book.
"Ow!"
"My hands slipped." She returned to her notes, but couldn't concentrate. Every time she saw her own name in the text, she was reminded that there was a guy sitting opposite her who, while not Dante (wasn't nearly hunking enough), he had descended into Hell, in a sense. But aside from that…
Screw it. She closed the book with a thud. "Do you know what I think the problem is here, Maxie?"
"No-one calls me that."
"Ernie calls you that, but that aside, here's the issue." She leant back in her chair and folded her arms. "You're smarter than you want everyone to think you are."
"Um, what?"
"You've got an archaeologist for a mum, you've gone on more adventures than I have fingers and toes combined…"
"That was oddly specific."
"…and you should know this stuff inside-out. You've saved the Vatican from literal demons for goodness sake."
Max shrugged.
"Instead," Bea said in a stern voice, "you rock up here, you don't do any work, your grades are passing at best, and…what?"
Max was grinning at her.
"What?" Bea hissed.
"Oh, nothing. Just wondering if you realize how much you sound like your mum."
Bea hit him with the book again.
"Or Principal Wormwood. Or Miss Haversham. Or-"
Another book, another hit.
"Careful, careful," Max said. He took off his cap and waved it at her. "You'll damage the Cosmic Cap if you keep that up."
"Well look on the bright side," Bea said tersely. "Least there's no brain I can damage."
"Huh? But you just said that I'm smarter than I let on."
"I say a lot of things," Bea sniffed, as she returned to her work.
Max leant forward. "Do you want my analysis of the situation?"
"Not really."
"You can't read The Divine Comedy without seeing your own name pop up, and you can't help but think 'hey, maybe I need a big hunk to rescue me from the clutches of Hell."
"Oh, sure," Bea murmured, not taking her eye off the page. "I'll get Norman right on that."
"Norman? Please. He's got a big sword, but he isn't the Mighty One. He's not the kind of guy who'd descend into the depths of the Earth for true love and-"
Bea hit him.
"Okay, seriously?" Max asked. "What did I do this time?"
Bea, after weighing her options, murmured, "you used the L-word."
"The what word?"
"The L-word," she repeated.
"Oh, right. The L-word."
Something the two of them had agreed on close to a decade ago was to never, ever, use the L-word. Words like "lazy," and "laconic" were fine, but if you got into single-syllable territory…well, that was just making things weird.
Then again, Bea figured, as she returned her gaze to the book, things were weird already. Skullmaster gone, the Doom Zone navigated…certain snakes, certain Egyptians…
She sighed and closed the book with a thud. "Give me that," she said.
"What?"
"The Gameboy." Without waiting for Max to answer, she yanked it from her hands, pressed START, and soon, a little man in a green-shaded world was running to the right and committing mass murder against walking mushrooms and detonating turtles.
"Thought you didn't care about videogames," Max murmured.
"I lied."
"Oh." There was a silence before he said, "just in case you're wondering, if you were ever abducted by an alien in a flying whatchamacallit, I'd go running to the right as well."
"Duly noted," Bea said, as she gained an extra life. "But thanks, Dante."
Max blinked. Bea blinked. The little man promptly died as he ran off a cliff.
So much for Paradiso, Bea thought.